Deceptive book cover; most of the books were smuggled in "lockers" (the photographs in the book showed them as metal trunks). Good bit of journalistic writing about Timbuktu, it's people and events between 2012 - 2015 especially concerning the manuscripts and books during the Malian civil war. The book alternates chapters between these events and the history of Europeans quest to discover Timbuktu from 1788. Fairly interesting and well researched. ( )

The city of Timbuktu with its ancient history has long captivated people. Just the very name conjures up images of an oasis in the desert, a city full of exotic people and a place where the mysteries of the East meet the gateway to the dark continent of Africa. It is a place that drew travellers in the Eighteenth century seeking the legendary place where even the slaves wore gold, but the desire to reach there was not always met with success, history shows us that the roads there were littered with failed expeditions as they succumbed to the hostile landscape, disease and attack.

There is another side to Timbuktu, it has always been a world centre in the Islamic world for learning from as far back as the 13th Century. As they became a centre where knowledge was pooled. This has left a lasting legacy of thousands and thousands of documents, books and manuscripts in public and personal libraries throughout the city on subjects as diverse as astronomy, religion, law and history as well as cultural subjects like poetry. These vast libraries came under threat from destruction in 2012 as al-Qaeda–linked jihadists poured across Mali wreaking havoc and destruction as they went. After destroying several mausoleums the librarians and archivists of the city were forced to consider the fate of their precious papers. So began the race to either hide the manuscripts or in the case of large collections, to move them to another city where they would be safe.

At times this reads like a thriller, as he tells the stories of how the manuscripts were moved from Timbuktu to a place of safety in Bamako using secure networks of couriers. Much of it was carried out in secret as the least amount of people that knew about it, the safer the operation. Charlie English recounts the stories he’d been told, before travelling to the city to see for himself the lockers and their precious cargoes. Whilst I think that it was important to set the context, for me it felt like there was too much emphasis on the past events. I didn’t like the switching around of the old and the new, I would have preferred the current day and historical events to be in separate sections. With its history, contemporary world issues and focus on ancient books, it is a difficult book to pigeonhole. It is a fascinating and very readable account of a small but significant part of world history. ( )

In 2013, the forces of AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb) take Timbuktu and immediately begin to impose their Salafist vision of Islam - one that is at odds with the spiritual, Sufi version that has been the norm in West Africa. The scholars of Timbuktu immediately worry for their vast and unique collection of Islamic and historic manuscripts from Medieval times, one of the few primary sources of West African history. Those worries increase as the jihardists start to smash the mausoleums of Sufi saints

And so begins a remarkable story as brave officials, families and holders of private collections of manuscripts start the dangerous (both to the smugglers and the manuscripts) and time consuming business of hiding some manuscripts and moving others to the relative safety of Bamako, many hundreds of miles away

Interspersed with this Charlie English presents a very knowledgeable but readable history of the exploration of West Africa, with a particular focus on the histiography of the region (ie the history of its history). This is fascinating enough on its own, particularly the chapters on the undoubtedly brave, but equally undoubtedly somewhat foolish, early British explorers, many of whom came to a premature end

So a very entertaining and informative read, which ends on a slightly sour note, as the author starts to doubt his own story and his own conclusions and has the intellectual honesty to present those doubts. Doubts that are very much in line with the vague, swirling, illusory history of Timbuktu itself ( )

Timbuktu is a name that's had a hold on the western imagination for centuries. In this book, Charlie English traces the history of foreign fascination with the fabled city, drawing parallels between the dangers faced by the European explorers who tried to find it and the attempts by the city's modern inhabitants to save their priceless manuscripts from destruction at the hands of Islamists. English describes past and present in vivid detail, and pushes further than the standard popular history account in not being content to accept the mythology of the manuscripts and their rescue at face value. His scepticism, and the way in pushes back against the easy but adrenaline-filled narrative, is refreshing. Overall an engrossing read.

I do wish the photo inserts had been printed in colour, though. It's so difficult to get a decent grasp of the materiality of the manuscripts when they've all been flattened out into black and white. ( )